Christ Jesus in the World

...We felt a respect for the poor and destitute as those nearest to God, as those chosen by Christ for His compassion.  Christ lived among men.  The great mystery of the Incarnation, which meant that God became man that man might become God, was a joy that made us want to kiss the earth in worship, because His feet once trod that same earth.  It was a mystery that we as Catholics accepted, but there were also the facts of Christ's life, that He was born in a stable, that He did not come to be a temporal king, that He worked with His hands, spent the first years of His life in exile, and the rest of His early manhood in a crude carpenter shop in Nazareth.  He fulfilled His religious duties in the synagogue and the temple.  He trod the roads in His public life and the first men He called were fishermen, small owners of boats and nets.  He was familiar with the migrant worker and the proletariat, and some of his parables dealt with them.  He spoke of the living wage, not equal pay for equal work, in the parable of those who came at the first and the eleventh hour.--Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pg. 200-201.